What Happened to the Mafia in Williamsburg?

November
4, 2015

by
John Surico

In
a city like New York, the past dies a fresh death every day. As you read this,
something special is being built over, transformed, forgotten, or turned into a
Pret a Manger. That's the consequence of constant change: Nothing is permanent,
and what memories we have are destined to be demolished by, or for, our
descendants.

We're
now building faster than we ever have before, and the sheer breadth of
differences separating today's New York from what the city was 30 or even 15
years ago is extreme. One could argue that there has never been a time in New
York where its incoming citizens have been more detached from—or completely
unaware of—the city's recent history.

What
was and what now is are nearly unidentifiable twins. And one of the most
visible examples of this can be found in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a neighborhood
that enjoys a storied legacy of organized crime and Mafia activity.

"It
was not necessarily the center of a lot of violence, but it's where many future
bosses got their start."—Christian Cipollini

As
anyone who has ever read the New York Times style section is well aware,
Williamsburg is now synonymous with a hodgepodge of conflicting labels:
hipster, yuppie, gentrifier, bourgeoise. In a way, the fire last year at a
Williamsburg archive became an unfortunate symbol of the times: Developers have
essentially pressed the restart button on newcomers' consciousness. You don't
need to remember shit, just make sure you've got first and last month's rent.

Condos
glisten above the once-abandoned East River waterfront; empty warehouses are
now "loft-inspired luxury townhouses," and Bedford Avenue, a
thoroughfare once littered with syringes, is now swarming with selfie
stick–carrying tour groups and SoHo-style boutiques. But before it was a
playground for real estate brokers, Williamsburg was a mob stronghold. In fact,
the Brooklyn neighborhood stretching from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway down
to Grand Street—now known primarily by the broker-invented monicker of East
Williamsburg—was not only a hangout for members of the five families of New
York, but also one of their original locales.

"It
was not necessarily the center of a lot of violence, but it's where many future
bosses got their start," Christian Cipollini, a well-known mob expert and
editor of Gangland Legends, told me. "When they came to America from
Sicily, they chose their spots. And a lot of them came and settled in
Williamsburg."

Long
before Whole Foods announced plans for a block-sized store there, the
Castellammarese crime clans called Williamsburg home. And at the tail end of
Prohibition, a bloody war broke out between those loyal to a man named
Salvatore Maranzano on one side and Joseph "the Boss" Masseria on the
other. Both men were killed in 1931, and Charles "Lucky" Luciano
stepped in to help establish five distinct crime families and offer some sense
of structure to the American Mafia.

"What
began in small places, like Williamsburg and Brownsville, spread across the
country," Cipollini continued. "It changed the face of organized
crime in America."

________________________________________

On
a recent jaunt in Williamsburg, I stepped into Fortunato Brothers, an ornate
Italian cafe on Manhattan Avenue, for a cup of coffee. The place itself is a
rarity in New Brooklyn, where overpriced coffee shops are the rule, not
traditional pastry makers with an autographed photo of Tony Bennett on the
wall. And that showed in the spot's clientele: Mostly Italian-speaking
residents ordered at the counter, and no one plugged into a Macbook was spotted
anywhere near it.

For
those who pass it on their way to the L train, it looks like an ordinary
Italian bakery full of artifacts from the homeland, rainbow-colored cookies,
and cannoli. Nowhere, of course, does it say that the co-owner of the place,
Mario Fortunato, was once chargedand convicted for the 1994 murder of a loan
shark named Tino Lombardi at the San Giuseppe Social Club just up the block.
(The conviction would later be overturned on appeal; in fact, Fortunato won a
$300,000 settlement last year.)

But
the man's status as an alleged Genovese associate is apparently still so
entrenched that the lawyer of a handicapped woman who sued the bakery for not
providing an access ramp dropped the case this past June because he was
concerned "for [her] safety," the woman told the Daily News. "I
used to make a joke about the men standing outside," she told the paper.
"I called them 'The Godfathers.'"

Michael
D'Urso, a cousin of Tino Lombardi who was wounded in the shooting that killed
the loan shark, later handed the government 500 hours worth of tape, leading to
the arrests of 45 alleged Gambino family goodfellas in 2001. By doing so,
D'Urso, who was known for hanging out at social clubs in Williamsburg, became
one of the most prolific rats in Mafia history.

At
the time, the Daily News described East Williamsburg as "an old-fashioned
Italian-American neighborhood, with pork stores stocked with plump salamis and
fresh smoked mozzarella and cafes that serve espresso." Now a tattoo spot
sits next to Fortunato Bros., and the sound of jackhammers at new condo sites
can be heard along the street outside. The social club where bullets once flew
is long gone, and the bakery's sign looks a bit decayed.

...even
the mob can't afford the rent anymore.

Yet
the Italian-American energy of the area lingers. Longtime residents hang red,
white, and green flags from their windows, while restaurants' doors remain
plastered with signs for upcoming Italian festivals. Graham Avenue itself is
alternatively called "Via Vespucci," and you can overhear Italian on
some corners. Still, the ethnic enclave seems strange for a neighborhood as
developed as Williamsburg is now. The immigrant is increasingly out of place
here.

Up
Graham Ave, I met an older man named Jimmy, who told me he moved to the
neighborhood in 1952, during the post-war boom, and has lived there ever since.
He pointed to all the stores in front of us—a hummus market, an "urban
puppy hotel," another damn coffee shop—and said, "None of this was
ever here before." The area, he added, was "much more Italian";
now it's prime real estate. "Everywhere you go, there's a condo being
built. It's terrible."

The
corner on which I spoke to Jimmy features an architect's office and one of
those expensive old-school barbers that are popular now, but was once a well-known
crime family headquarters called the Motion Lounge.

It
was there that Joseph D. Pistone, the undercover FBI agent better known as
Donnie Brasco, infiltrated the Bonanno crime family for six years. That's the
same clan at the center of the trial of Vincent Asaro, an alleged participant
in the Lufthansa heist ofGoodfellas fame. The undercover operation ultimately
led to more than 100 convictionsof capos, soldiers, made men, and wiseguys, and
a pretty decent movie starring Al Pacino and Johnny Depp.

I
asked Jimmy if he remembers how long the Motion Lounge, and the Mafia life it
brought with it, had been closed. "For a while now," he replied.
"It left with the rest of the neighborhood."

Apparently,
even the mob can't afford the rent anymore.

Graham
Avenue Meats & Deli, just a few buildings down, also began to fade from the
collective memory last year. The now-shuttered spot was once notorious to
old-timers and newcomers alike for its enormous sandwiches—"The
Godfather" being one of them—and was run by an alleged Bonanno wiseguy
named Michael "the Butcher" Virtuoso, who died after pleading guilty
to running a loan sharking business out of the back of the store.

According
to FBI testimony, Virtuoso had a Rolodex of mob contacts there, with entries
that are just fun to say out loud: "Vinny Gorgeous," "Johnny
Sideburns," "Little Anthony," to name a few. He faced two and a
half years in prison at the time of his death.

But
local business owners I spoke with were completely unaware. They had only heard
the owner passed away—not that he was apparently deeply entrenched in a Mafia
crime family as of last year. No one seemed to know, really. When I asked a
young guy at a cafe about it, he shrugged, and looked back down at his phone.
Others followed suit.

Based
on my observations, it was safe to say that the young woman jogging by, wearing
a shirt that read, "The gym is my happy hour," probably has no idea
that this used to be an area where you could get killed if you saw something
you weren't supposed to see.

In
the times I've dined at Bamonte's Restaurant, the last stop on my mini
Williamsburg mob tour, it felt like I was transported back to the scene in
Goodfellas, shot from Henry Hill's point of view, when he's introducing the
litany of mobsters to the viewers ("And then there was Johnny Two
Times...."). The women still come in wearing flashy fur coats, with
blown-out bobs, and the men are in slick suits, carrying thick accents. The
food is great, too.

"I
used to go there three, four times a week," Anthony "Fat Tony"
Rabito, the alleged consigliere of the Bonanno family, told a friend in 2009,
according to the New York Post. "They got great mussels."

After
being released from prison for racketeering and extortion, Rabito was
reportedly told by the feds in 2009 that he could no longer dine at Bamonte's,
nor three other New York Italian restaurants, because they were
"hot."' Prosecutors said then that the Williamsburg hang, which is
nestled near McCarren Park and now boxed in by high-rises, was where Rabito
held court to discuss mafioso matters, although the restaurant itself didn't
have any crime ties. But the location makes sense: Rabito was one of the many
mobsters who were booked back in the day by Donnie Brasco, in his case on drug
charges.

Peering
inside Bamonte's window, I was surprised to see a bearded bartender on the younger
side, cleaning up before the day's work. I had this weird sense then that this
is how the mob relics of the neighborhood will continue to function— as a
culinary institution, not a hangout—while organized crime becomes less and less
compatible with the city in 2015. Even if some ephemera are fresh, it's safe to
say the Mafia has largely been outmoded by modernity, completely avoidable to
those moving through the safer, glitzier neighborhood.

Still,
the Mafia persists in some form in modern New York—increasingly toothless,
perhaps, after years of prosecution, but functioning in different modes. In
Williamsburg, the remnants of the former nabe are pretty deeply buried. It's
not the seedy past of a neighborhood that we ought to romanticize or long for,
but it is something we would do well not to forget.

"Of
course, you need that change to happen," Cipollini, the mob expert, told
me. "But really, you're losing a part of the city's history. And you have
to ask yourself: What legacy did they leave behind?"